shadow29: Well I'm staying with
XP. And if Gog drops XP then I will have to play games the old way. Games made in XP days should support XP.

flashpulse: Yep. Just use Avast anti virus and get an ad blocker plugin for Firefox. Windows 8 is no safer than Windows 98. Just don't go to strange websites and only open or view text emails. Unless you know it's coming from someone you trust. I've been using computers for a long time now. If the new OS offers features you don't need or want... There's no reason to upgrade. It's not like your pc is going to stop working. Not the OS anyway. Hard drives and so forth is a different story.

shadow29: I feel the same way. Microsoft wants to forced people to leave a OS they like using. XP is fine for me.

That's how I feel. I like XP a lot. After all the games are old. So XP should matter. But I think GOG really wants to be modern and get all the latest games. Because soon they'll run out of old games. But new games aren't all that really. GamersGate has a nice selection of games. If only they came in file form like GOG. They have hidden object games. I like them. And I like all the old games too. Not so much the trashy games they make now.

ssokolow: Have you tried running it in a virtual machine?

I can paste step-by-step instructions for setting up a VirtualBox VM using Linux+Wine VM which boots straight into the game if you don't have an older Windows install disc kicking around. (Icewind Dale 2 is listed as Platinum compatibility in the WineHQ AppDB and PlayOnLinux has a setup script for it.)

tammerwhisk: This isn't true at all. Modern OS' are much better at limiting the access software has to various system resources, better error handling, and a better seperation of resources and privileges. XP and older are open books anymore the number of exploits and vulnerabilities is astounding. Sure, they do "work" but they are not remotely secure and a simple AV isn't enough to make up for the deficiency.
XP has more security loopholes than Sony's networks. And is unsupported by basically everything anymore.

Wolf3: And this announcement once again shows how much ass GOG kicks! :-)

Wolf3: I was blown away that people are still using XP. XP was supported longer than like any OS ever. Microsoft does an amazing job supporting old OSes-MUCH better than any other company, but they can't do it forever.

I also don't get it, like every version of Windows has some better hardware support and some nice interface tweaks. Even 7 seems a little archaic compared to 8 even though the interface is almost the same.

jalister: 7 doesn't feel archaic to me at all. 8 has way more issues for me. 8 feels schizophrenic with the traditional and modern desktops. I can't stand the modern UI, borderless windows, and the flat look of it all. If there was a version of 8 that had the entire modern UI ripped out of it, then I might like it.

My Linux distros have had better hardware support to me than any version of Windows I've used so far.

skeletonbow: Start preparing to be surprised I guess then, as Microsoft has officially announced that DirectX 12 will be Windows 10 exclusive. ;oP

This is no surprise because every single Microsoft OS that has previously come out has had a new version of DirectX which was exclusive and none of them have ever been made available at a later date as an upgrade for their previous operating systems, at least going back to Windows XP which had DX 9.0c IIRC. Not sure about Vista but I think that one was DX 10.x and then DX 11.x on Windows 7.

They've stated somewhere that the redesign of DX12 touches many parts of and depends on the Windows 10 kernel and other infrastructure and could not easily be retrofitted into their earlier operating systems. As a developer I know that this falls into the category of "it would be a massive effort of major structural changes to our older operating systems that we are not willing to make for a system we now consider legacy and that we want people to upgrade away from to our new OS" rather than it technically being impossible. Thats something they mostly had to decide while designing DirectX 12 from the start really. If they wanted to make it avalable for Windows 8.x or 7 or older they would have had to make purposeful design changes to accomodate the code to the different platforms structurally.

Likewise, nobody else will find a way to make it work as it isn't a matter of copying some files around and twiddling the registry, it's a matter of having the source code of the operating system kernel and driver infrastructure and other parts of Windows and completely redesigning them at that level to add the necessary functionality. The only thing external parties could possibly do would be to write wrapper libraries that act as a shim, converting apps that make DirectX 12 calls into making OpenGL or Vulkan calls instead much like how other wrapper libraries have done in the past. We wont see a native DirectX 12 implementation for Windows Vista/7/8.x however, not the direction Microsoft has chosen for it, which is the same decision they've made every Windows release.

That brings up an interesting question though, which is - has anyone else ever implemented a DX11.x wrapper for older Windows OS's, or DX10 for XP for example, and wrapping them to what in that case - to OpenGL? There has to be some other API with similar functionality to wrap too, and that requires video driver support also so for it to work, the OpenGL drivers of the old OS from AMD/nVidia/Intel/whoever need to support similar functionality to DX12 in their Windows 7/8 OpenGL stack in order to get hardware accelerated functionality similar through a DX12->OpenGL or DX12->Vulkan wrapper.

It's theoretically doable, I just haven't seen anything out there that does it personally and have my doubts about someone doing it for DX12 as well. Where it is more likely to happen is in Linux where there is a much higher demand for that. The Wine project just recently announced increased support for DX11 state tracking which ultimately allows games on Linux to use DX11 and get mapped at the OS level to OpenGL for example, but I'm not aware of anything similar for Windows although I'd love to know about it if there is such a thing.

tammerwhisk: This isn't true at all. Modern OS' are much better at limiting the access software has to various system resources, better error handling, and a better seperation of resources and privileges. XP and older are open books anymore the number of exploits and vulnerabilities is astounding. Sure, they do "work" but they are not remotely secure and a simple AV isn't enough to make up for the deficiency.
tammerwhisk: XP has more security loopholes than Sony's networks. And is unsupported by basically everything anymore.

RottenRotz: Well,since i don't have any more options i could try that.paste it and i'll get into it when i find some spare time

Wolf3: I was blown away that people are still using XP. XP was supported longer than like any OS ever. Microsoft does an amazing job supporting old OSes-MUCH better than any other company, but they can't do it forever.

I also don't get it, like every version of Windows has some better hardware support and some nice interface tweaks. Even 7 seems a little archaic compared to 8 even though the interface is almost the same.

flashpulse: LOL, that's funny. Been using computers since the 80's. Keep believing whatever you want to believe. Even the newest operating systems can get viruses, adware and hacked.

tinyE: WE'RE READY!